Evaluating the Performance of Sector Mutual Funds

The growth in the US mutual fund industry has remained slow, despite the recent upside blow in the overall market attributed to the global pandemic. The mutual fund industry is still observing a fee crisis and slower yearly growth, but the compression occurs short-term with more drastic results. Mutual funds that would serve these “new normal” requirements need to be future-fit. In this dissertation, I focus on the following questions: Do sector mutual funds add value to investors` portfolios by contributing a better risk-adjusted rate of return? Is there evidence of performance consistency? Do portfolio managers require different skills in portfolio management mutual funds? Should mutual fund portfolio managers opt for interactive planning as compared to predictive modeling for managing the mutual fund? The study found that the benchmarked index outperformed the sector mutual fund and provided a better risk-adjusted return. This suggests that investors would be better off using a benchmarked index rather than a sector mutual fund. Additionally, the manager\u27s experience does not seem to impact the return from a sector mutual fund, indicating that investors do not need to worry about who is managing their mutual fund. Finally, collective aspects of sector mutual funds (e.g., portfolio returns and performance) are two different scenarios, so investors should be careful when comparing these metrics

Intelligent agent for formal modelling of temporal multi-agent systems

Software systems are becoming complex and dynamic with the passage of time, and to provide better fault tolerance and resource management they need to have the ability of self-adaptation. Multi-agent systems paradigm is an active area of research for modeling real-time systems. In this research, we have proposed a new agent named SA-ARTIS-agent, which is designed to work in hard real-time temporal constraints with the ability of self-adaptation. This agent can be used for the formal modeling of any self-adaptive real-time multi-agent system. Our agent integrates the MAPE-K feedback loop with ARTIS agent for the provision of self-adaptation. For an unambiguous description, we formally specify our SA-ARTIS-agent using Time-Communicating Object-Z (TCOZ) language. The objective of this research is to provide an intelligent agent with self-adaptive abilities for the execution of tasks with temporal constraints. Previous works in this domain have used Z language which is not expressive to model the distributed communication process of agents. The novelty of our work is that we specified the non-terminating behavior of agents using active class concept of TCOZ and expressed the distributed communication among agents. For communication between active entities, channel communication mechanism of TCOZ is utilized. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed agent using a real-time case study of traffic monitoring system

The Marshlands of Southern Iraq: a very humanitarian dilemma

The issue of the Marshlands and their inhabitants - human, animal and plant - encapsulates many divergent themes: scientific, economic, political, cultural and legal. And contrary to most analyses it covers a relatively wide geographical area outside Iraq. But whatever the theme we propose to follow - and in whatever context we wish to pursue a given topic - the common denominator in most discussions surrounding this issue is the environmental destruction of the Marshlands, with the Government of Iraq being accused of a systematic policy that has proved catastrophic both for Iraq's people and their unique natural surroundings, as well as Iraq's neighbours. In the latter context, activities in the Marshes have had perhaps the profoundest effect on the Islamic Repubic of Iran. (Párrafo extraído del texto a modo de resumen)Mesa 3: Estados Unidos e IrakInstituto de Relaciones Internacionales (IRI

The Marshlands of Southern Iraq: a very humanitarian dilemma

The issue of the Marshlands and their inhabitants - human, animal and plant - encapsulates many divergent themes: scientific, economic, political, cultural and legal. And contrary to most analyses it covers a relatively wide geographical area outside Iraq. But whatever the theme we propose to follow - and in whatever context we wish to pursue a given topic - the common denominator in most discussions surrounding this issue is the environmental destruction of the Marshlands, with the Government of Iraq being accused of a systematic policy that has proved catastrophic both for Iraq's people and their unique natural surroundings, as well as Iraq's neighbours. In the latter context, activities in the Marshes have had perhaps the profoundest effect on the Islamic Repubic of Iran. (Párrafo extraído del texto a modo de resumen)Mesa 3: Estados Unidos e IrakInstituto de Relaciones Internacionales (IRI

Teratoma with Malignant Transformation: A Case Report with Pathological, Cytogenetic, and Immunohistochemistry Analysis

Background. Teratoma with malignant transformation (TMT) is rare and most commonly encountered in adult patient with germ cell tumor (GCT). Method. We report a rare case of testicular teratoma with metastatic TMT/embryonal rhabdomyosarcoma (ERMS). A 44-year-old man underwent right orchiectomy which revealed a malignant teratoma, he subsequently had right pneumonectomy with two pulmonary masses containing a high-grade embryonal rhabdomyosarcoma. The patient developed liver metastasis three months after initial diagnosis. He was treated with a chemotherapy regimen with vincristine, dactinomycin, and cyclophosphamide (VAC) alternating with vincristine and irinotecan (VI) with complete resolution of his liver lesion. The tumors were examined with a battery of cytogenetic, immunohistochemical, and molecular assays. Results. The malignant cells were immunohistochemically positive for desmin, myogenin, and MyoD1. Molecular cytogenetics of embryonal rhabdomyosarcoma tissue revealed the presence of i(12p). The tumor expressed high level of TOPO2A, TOPO1, MRP1, MGMT, BCRP, ERCC1, RRM1, and TS. Conclusion. The activity of topoisomerase inhibitors and the potential usefulness of topoisomerase expression as biomarkers should be further tested in aprospective study

Association of Physical Activity with Co-morbid Conditions in Geriatric Population

To find out association of physical activity with co-morbid conditions in geriatric population, a cross-sectional study was conducted in different cties of Pakistan in 2015. A total of 114 participants were inducted by non-probability convenience sampling technique. Data was collected after informed verbal consent by a validated questionnaire that is Rapid Assessment of Physical Activity (RAPA). Participants were categorized into two groups i.e. physically active and physically inactive. Data was entered and analyzed in SPSS version 20. There were 66 (57.9%) males and 48 (42.1%) females with mean age of 57.04±7.348 years. Among hypertensive individuals (n=43, 37.7%) there were 39 (90.7%) physically inactive, among individuals having angina (n=17, 14.9%) there were 15 (88.2%) physically inactive. Out of 37 (32.5%) diabetics, 35 (94.6%) were physically inactive. Among individuals suffering from arthritis (n=40, 35.1%), there were 38 (95%) physically inactive. A significant association was found between physical activity and diabetes and arthritis with p-value of 0.048 and 0.029 respectively. Physical activity is significantly associated with diabetes and arthritis in geriatric population. Adequate physical activity should be performed to reduce the risk of co-morbid conditions and improve the quality of life in geriatric population

The Forecastability of Underlying Building Electricity Demand from Time Series Data

Forecasting building energy consumption has become a promising solution in Building Energy Management Systems for energy saving and optimization. Furthermore, it can play an important role in the efficient management of the operation of a smart grid. Different data-driven approaches to forecast the future energy demand of buildings at different scale, and over various time horizons, can be found in the scientific literature, including extensive Machine Learning and Deep Learning approaches. However, the identification of the most accurate forecaster model which can be utilized to predict the energy demand of such a building is still challenging.In this paper, the design and implementation of a data-driven approach to predict how forecastable the future energy demand of a building is, without first utilizing a data-driven forecasting model, is presented. The investigation utilizes a historical electricity consumption time series data set with a half-hour interval that has been collected from a group of residential buildings located in the City of London, United Kingdo

Bioassay evaluation of toxicity reduction in common effluent treatment plant

This paper investigates the utility and validity of bioassay toxicity testing using Daphnia magna straus as test organism for monitoring the common effluent treatment plant (CETP) receiving both industrial as well as domestic effluent. The average daphnia toxicity (Gd) at inlet, after primary settling tank (PST), secondary settling tank (SST) and tertiary treatment unit were reported as Gd-16, Gd-12, Gd-4 and Gd-1 respectively. However, a cumulative percentage removal in toxicity after PST, SST and tertiary treatment units was observed as 25%, 75% and 100%, respectively, during entire study period. It showed that a complete removal in daphnia toxicity (Gd) i.e.100% had been achieved only after tertiary treatment unit involving Dual Media Filters followed by activated carbon filters. Further attempts have been made to establish the relationship between key wastewater constituents i.e. Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD) and Suspended Solids (SS) with respects to daphnia toxicity (Gd). It was observed that COD and SS show a statistically significant correlation (r2) with daphnia toxicity (Gd) i.e. 0.89 and 0.81, respectively. Thus COD and SS can serve as a regulatory tool in lieu of an explicit toxicity standard (to check and improve the operational status of wastewatertreatment plants in time)